‘Ambulances had to be called, it was a whole thing’: How HR leaders deal with too much fun at holiday parties

“Ambulances had to be called, it was a whole thing,” Dani Herrera, a talent culture and DEI consultant, said of a situation in which an employee had a little too much to drink at a holiday party. “That person fell down the stairs and, I think, broke a leg or something like that. Not great, friend.”

Herrera has seen it all. And she shared it all—from what she’s seen, to what you, the HR professional, can do should you encounter similar situations—with Kate Noel, SVP and head of people operations at Morning Brew, during a recent episode of HR Brew’s People Person podcast.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Have you ever experienced a crazy holiday situation?

So, I’ll start maybe with a positive one. Okay, so the positive one was many, many years ago I was working at a company and what they did was they actually had it during the day and they did it like some sort of a retreat of sorts. So you actually had spaces indoors and outdoors and everybody could do whatever it is that they wanted to. No alcohol was around, which made it way more inclusive and a little bit better. So that was a really good one. But the worst ones are really, really bad. I’ve seen everything. I’ve seen harassment, I’ve seen sexual harassment. I’ve seen someone falling down stairs because they were a little bit tipsy. So yeah, not great.

Now, it’s the day after, and we are now dealing with the aftermath of the party. What are some tips for HR pros to be prepared?

First and foremost, try to do it on a Friday.

Thursday is [also] ok, because Friday could be hopefully, it’s a little bit more flexible. You could come in a little bit later, but let’s not do it on a Tuesday. I understand, especially in New York, real estate is expensive. So you will have your party whenever it is that you can have it, but tough on the middle of the week.

And then I would strongly recommend, especially if you’re doing it in the middle of the week, let’s make sure that the next day is a little bit more flexible. If we are a full 9-to-5 and you have to be at 9am and that’s in the company policy, maybe the party needs to end a little bit early.

Let’s just say we get some tea: We hear something that went down at the party, or maybe there was a little after party. As an HR person, what would you recommend as the best way to approach these things?

So it goes back to whatever policy you have in place and the culture that you’ve built…But if you are hearing, as I was talking about before, someone had an accident, there are processes and steps that you have to follow. You might want to make sure that that person is actually okay. Are they in the hospital? Do we need to notify their managers? Do we need to reassign the work that they were doing or whatever that is? If the tea is a little bit on the unfortunate side, there is, I don’t know, harassment, that is some more difficult conversation that we need to have and some difficult decisions might need to be made. But again, it really depends on what the situation was, what your company culture is, and what your policies are. And if you do not have any policies to cover any of the things that we were talking about, maybe this is the time to actually get those done.

For more from this conversation, tune into the People Person podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube, or watch it below.

This report was originally published by HR Brew.